Graffiti as Inherent Human Need to Assert Authorship

June 16, 2005

I’ve seen this for a long while now, several months I’d wager. This is a bit of graffiti as written on a random wire that’s dangling over a rail, at the Damen Blue Line stop.

I’m not sure who Perch is, or why it’s important anyone know that he (guessing it’s a he) wrote this in 2004. At it’s heart, this guy just really needed to carve his name into something, to sign his name and let the world know when he did it.

And really… isn’t that what writing is all about? The same need, the same compulsion, the same hope that our names will somehow outlast our bodies? I think all writers and artists have a similar desire, to let the world know, somehow, that they were here.